The person behind The Hermits' Rest blog and many others. I'm a certified Texas Master Naturalist and love the nature of Milam County. I manage technical writers in Austin, help with Hearts Homes and Hands, a personal assistance service, in Cameron, and serve on three nonprofit boards. You may know me from La Leche League, knitting, iNaturalist, or Facebook. I'm interested in ALL of you!
*We were only calling it poop coffee or butt coffee as we laughed our way through our beverages…
The thing is, I always tell people I’m willing to try any food, at least once. So, when my colleague Chriztine decided she was interested in trying the coffee pictured at right, I (and two other coworkers) just had to say, “Yes.”
What does that mean, “zero contact with the animals?” Well, this is that coffee that’s passed through the digestive tract of the civet cat, which you may have heard of (many people think it goes through monkeys, but no). The sustainable part is important, because the poor little animals were being mistreated to get them to poop out enough beans to meet demand. We didn’t want anything to do with that!
So, according to the story on the bag, this is the nice version of the kipi luwak coffee.
Gimme some coffee. And don’t call me a weasel!
As a naturalist, I feel compelled to let you know that the civet is actually not a cat, and is more closely related to our friends, the mongoose family. I found this out in an article from Singapore, which informed me that “the special taste of these coffee is due to the fermentation process when the civets digest the beans.” MMMMM. Also I learned that this kind of coffee is called “weasel coffee” in Vietnam.
So, did I drink it?
First we spent a long time grinding the beans, during which time coworker Jen frequently reminded us that the roasting process will have killed off any germs or wee beasties living on the coffee. Whew.
You can tell they’re looking forward to this.
And then we poured hot water in and watched it drip. Was it chocolatey like Dipu thought? Were the beans old, like Jen thought? Were we all laughing too loud, like I thought?
Ready to give it a try. Note beautiful staging of coffee-making equipment.
Next, we all had to pose with our cups ready. And then we drank it. Guess what? It tasted very much like a cup of coffee. We didn’t detect any excessive smoothness or other fermentation results.
Yep. That’s coffee, all right.
But, since it was the most expensive cup of coffee any of us had ever imbibed, you can bet we all finished it. (Thanks, Chriztine.) We tried to get more people to drink it, but most flat-out refused, even when I politely stuck the cup under their noses and demanded, “Wanna smell my poop coffee?” So hilarious.
Rob painfully tastes the coffee. The new guy behind him got a good chuckle out of us. He was getting “pod coffee,” as we call the product from that machine (some like it; some don’t).
Rob here tried a tiny bit and said he did NOT like it. That will save him the investment of buying more if he did like it!
The best part of the day was making all the jokes and laughing away some of the work stress. I will say that I’m glad the only coffee I brought home was some medium-roast blends to drink in the mornings at the Bobcat Lair. No more poop coffee.
By the way, we have civets in Texas (ring-tail cats). Wonder what happens when they eat mequite beans?
Sure, it was 102 again today. But today was the day Anita and I rewarded ourselves for all the garage cleaning and wine room construction. Yes, we went to Pier 1 to check out the fall decor.
Wait!
I forgot to share last week that Anita got a special accent for the wine room, a beautiful Tiffany-style lamp she found on Overstock.com. She also got a few wine books. Fancy.
Back to Seasonal stuff
Isn’t this post riveting so far? I’m pretty dulle when not ranting.
Anyway, we knew we wanted to get a couple more of the glass pumpkins Pier 1 does every year. Other than that Anita had her eye on an acorn made out of leaves, and I wanted a calm autumn wreath.
Monday evening we expanded our usual guest list to include some new people, in honor of Labor Day. We invited our cabin tenant, Tyler, along with his wife, Yanelly, who just moved to town. We also invited our new friends, Kayla and Matt, who recently bought a house from us and now live next to Martha and Mike.
And if you’re in the community, you have to hang out with Fiona (that’s Matt and Kayla)
We realized that we’ve been busy creating a community ever since we started coming to the ranch. We’re so grateful to Sara and Ralph for letting us buy our little slice of heaven and start down the road to making a life in Milam County. And now we’re helping bring in more folks, like my sister, Mandi and family, Mike and Martha, Kathleen, and Kayla and Matt!
You do have to cook a LOT of burgers for a community cookout, says Mike.
Forming a community
Pretty much everyone who’s become part of my social circle in Milam County has been because I volunteered to do something. That may explain why I’m such a “joiner,” as Sensei Larry, who taught my sons karate, has been saying for 20 years or so.
I’ve been trying to not do quite so much this weekend, but other than putting off one important task (which I will work on all next week), I’ve been planning things, improving websites, and volunteering. I’m sort of proud of what I’ve managed to do! I love volunteering.
The Hermit Haus
One thing is that I improved the social media presence of our meeting venue, The Hermit Haus. I’d had a website since we bought the building, but not done much with it. I now have a Facebook page for it, where I can easily share upcoming events and news. Thanks to Mandi inviting everyone she knows, we have a good number of fans already!
Mandi and I also spent more time working on this business today, and we have pricing all set, with a sale for events during our renovation.
Who knows when it will actually look like this!
We also had lots of ideas for things to do. One thing is I want to start a coffeehouse/house concert series like the old Live Oak Coffeehouse I used to participate in. You know, so I can name it “CoffeeHaus Concerts @ The Hermit Haus” or something with “haus” in it.
I have some good music connections in town, so I hope to partner with one of them to do the bookings and such. The idea would be to have a “listening room” atmosphere where people actually pay attention to the music. By charging admission, the performers could get some pay and we could also give a cut to a local charity. Sound good?
That Brochure
I have also put in a surprising (to me) number of hours on the brochure I’m creating to our Master Naturalist chapter and another group. I’m real proud at how easily the draft came together. But, it’s taking a while for all the many, many comments and analyses by the committee to get cleared up. Thus, I’m making lots of changes.
To be honest, I’d rather work with eagle-eyed thoughtful reviewers than with people who don’t point things out until the item is published! Right?
One of the lovely images in the brochure, by Ann Collins.
I’ve been also chatting with potential people to work at Hearts, Homes and Hands, which I can’t help but do. And I am reading up on managing nonprofits so I can talk rationally about it with my fellow MTOL directors.
Spirituality
Those of you wondering what I was going to do about finding a spiritual community can rest easier. I think my friend, Martha, and I have come up with something we can do with a few local friends, which will nicely meet our needs but still be disorganized enough to NOT be organized religion. I’ll leave it at that, but I’m happy I figured something out!
I hope those of you in the US got at least a little break on Labor Day. I know many people don’t, including my own kid. And in other places, I sure hope you had a reasonable Monday!
I just had to share this! As I was driving into the Wild Hermits part of the ranch, I saw our tenant messing with a cow. Hmm, I thought, some of those cows looked pretty bagged up yesterday (yeah I talk rancher talk to myself).
Sure enough, when he left, I saw this shiny new calf he’d just tagged. Hooray! It’s New Mama time here! These won’t freeze to death for sure.
Brand new baby!
It turns out there were two new brown calves, but the mama blocked my view when I drove by. Lucky, I found that baby in a photo of the other pair.
There’s another baby hiding at right. Moo!
I found the cool magnifying glass thing in my photo tools. Handy.
Wannabe
I guess the cow hormones must have drifted over to the chicken coop, because Blackie has gone broody. That means she wants to hatch eggs. Last week Kathleen and I managed to remove one.
Thanks, Internet!
Yesterday and the day before, she was not happy to have me poking at her, but today I just used both hands and managed to remove four more green eggs from her. I only got poked badly twice.
I read that they stay broody 3 weeks, so I hope my hand makes it through two more. I also hope she eats and drinks enough. They only leave the nest once a day. Poor Blackie. She’s all hormonal.
That’s Blackie in the middle of this picture from back when I had more chickens.
(The remaining 6 chickens are still fine! They love the cube!)
I’m taking a day off from thinking about complicated issues and hard stuff, at least for the most part. I did do some brainstorming this afternoon with my friend Martha as a result of our spiritual life crises. That was good for us both!
I’m relaxing, too, says Vlassic.
It’s been a bit more relaxing than usual around here, so we’ve been hanging out with our precious canines. I’m relieved to say that they are all getting along really well. The worst behavior issue is that Vlassic has been avoiding the family room ever since Penney arrived and lashed out at him when he wanted to share a lap with her.
Vlassic is actually touching Penney. Harvey’s just watching the young ones tussle.
I think that’s getting better, though, because they have all been in my den on the couch playing away (I had intended to take a nap, but instead I took pictures of the smaller dogs all playing together indoors).
Hey, let’s change the subject. Cheerful stuff! No one reads this kind of post! I’ll write anyway.
Thor was my back-seat companion.
Yesterday afternoon, since there was no internet in Cameron anyway, I went on a fact-finding mission to Aggieland Humane Society in Brazos County with my MTOL co-directors, Jean and Mark. Our brains are now very full.
We met a smart person
We found the whole facility to be warm and friendly. You feel welcome as soon as you approach the place, too.
The entry area. This building was originally a house.
We met with the executive director, Kathy Bice, who started out as an Animal Control Officer and has learned the animal shelter business from the ground up. She was incredibly generous with her knowledge of building animal shelters. More important, she gave us invaluable information for ways to raise the funding our Milam Touch of Love organization will need to create a quality facility for our county’s animals.
Sorry to leave y’all hanging yesterday after my big discourse on organized religion yesterday. I do have a good excuse: we had no internet or phone service most of the day, so while I wrote a lot about things I did, they got lost uploading.
My colleagues and I visited an animal shelter in Bryan yesterday. Too bad that post is gone.
I’ll get to all that eventually. No internet is just a minor woe! And I was actually too busy doing stuff to write about it.
Cathy and I being shocked that it cooled off just before game time and it was pleasant!
It was darned good to get back to high school football again, though. Cathy and I sat in our usual seats with our usual neighbors and got through a typical up and down Cameron Yoe game. They let the other team run back and forth with impunity a few times, but settled in, and we got to see some beautiful passes and runs.
Also, the band was really good for their first time marching their show. The poor other band stood there and read from their music. The drum majors didn’t even conduct. I guess it’s a rebuilding year for them.
The directions sign is rather reflective. I think you can see me and the Baptist Church better than the sign.
Today I spent all morning making signs so people can find our offices and events, because we’ve had some trouble. The Hermit Haus Redevelopment blog spells that out. I also helped a little with baby shower prep at the office.
Extremely cute baby shower decor by Melissa.
But, I have some peachy new nails that match the ginger dog nicely, and I’m happy to report Vlassic’s lump is a lot smaller.
Penney nicely offsets my orange-to-yellow sparkling nails. Yes, they glow.
Last Thing
I’d like to sincerely thank those of you who’ve posted insightful and supportive comments here or on Facebook for the past few days. I feel less alone. I guess all the people I pissed off defriended me, so all I have left are supportive people who are willing to discuss things without name-calling. I’m happy with that!
FIRST: To all my long-time church friends. Don’t panic. You are still my friends and will always be. And to the current and former ministers at the church I’ve been a member of, it’s not you. You have my deepest respect and admiration.
That said, in the back of my mind, I’ve been thinking about my membership in an organized religion for the past twenty-something years. It’s clear to me that I did it for reasons that had nothing to do with the institution itself: I just wanted to meet some people with values similar to mine and to have a chance to sing with others.
Thank goodness I did yoga today.
I had not made friends in my neighborhood (only ever made a few), and my work was online, so I couldn’t make work friends. A church seemed like a good idea, and a church that would accept me as I am and give my children a foundation from which to create their spiritual paths.
I joined a Unitarian Universalist congregation, where I made some wonderful friends and enjoyed a close-knit community for many years. When the church changed focus from building community to growth, I still had my friends and the music we performed to serve my needs. I also enjoyed women’s conferences and other activities.
I enjoyed the traditions and rituals in the weekly services, too, and I learned a lot from the sermons. I also liked how sermons seemed educational and disagreement was welcomed. I didn’t feel like I was being told to toe some denominational line or being put down for having a different perspective. That was good.
Change is inevitable
People change and institutions change. There were a couple of upheavals in the church, but we got through them. I was really surprised at how much I grew personally from these challenges. I handled change! Scary change!
Change is scary! It’s often good! It can be hard.
But some of the change I’ve seen in the church and its parent denomination have made me feel less and less comfortable. And for that reason, I don’t think I want to be a UU anymore.
Lack of forgiveness: Leaders in the church keep getting removed from positions for mistakes that seem totally human to me. Someone said something “politically incorrect,” or they made a mistake when they were younger and less wise, or in some way they just weren’t living up to expectations of “wokeness.”
Rather than working with people to make amends; allowing them to learn from mistakes, apologize, and move forward; or look into how an error occurred and not do it again…people just get forced to leave. And people get shunned for not being perfect.
It’s the “me-too” movement taken to other areas. If you screw up and someone points it out, you should go into your corner or cave and stay there.
Intolerance: More and more, I see denomination and church members conveying an intolerant attitude towards people who have a different point of view, a different perspective, or unique experiences that might lead to conclusions that are different from what’s being promoted by the leadership. That reminds me way too much of the kinds of spiritual communities I’ve avoided my whole life (prescriptive, more uniform traditions are fine if that is what makes you comfortable; it’s just not for me). I see lip service for supporting diversity of thought and expression, but in practice I see a LOT of pressure to conform to whatever’s currently en vogue.
[Unpopular aside alert: It sometimes even seems that, if you are white and straight, you start out with so much negative baggage and un-earned privileges that nothing you say or do will make your input worth including. Wow. Even if I think I believe in reincarnation, I don’t think I chose to be a white straight woman (European-American cis-gender I mean). I was just born this way. I might actually care about people who aren’t like me and want to help make the world a safer and more welcoming place for them.]
Ageism: And this one’s the straw that breaks this old camel’s back. I know it is very important to mainstream denominations in the US to attract youth and young families. They don’t want to die! (I understand that from the first-hand experience with the church we bought because there were no new people joining the congregation.)
I also enthusiastically embrace the inclusion of new perspectives, new voices, and new energy into all institutions. They bring welcome change and help us see where we’re bogged down from always looking at our communities and institutions in the same way. Like I said yesterday, I learn so much from people who are growing up today.
But, both the larger UU Association and the church I have been associated with have been (both subtly and occasionally overtly) pushing aside or putting down input from older church members. And I’m not just talking about recent events. I once said a program didn’t really meet the needs of me and my friends, and I was told that well, the church isn’t looking to please the long-time members.
Individuals have also given me an uncomfortable feeling about being my age in the church. My generations experiences with racism, sexism, homophobia and other issues are put aside as no longer relevant. That’s really hurtful, especially when I consider how much I learned from feminists and equal-rights activists of the generation before me!
A fond (I mean it) farewell
I’d been thinking of starting a satellite church in Cameron, but I really don’t think the lack of acceptance of people who think differently would go over well there.
I mean it.
So, I think I’ll go back to being a solo practitioner of my own brand of crazy pacifist/neo-pagan/Buddhist/gnostic mish-mash and leave institutional religion to people for whom it works. At this stage in my life, I want to focus on areas where my input is appreciated, my propensity to make mistakes tolerated, and my imperfect ways of supporting and allying with others are welcomed.
I’m just going through a phase where I’m tired of having to prove I’m good enough to be in the same room with UUs. I still support people who get their needs met by UUism or other such things. I’m just outa here.
PS: I’m not wanting to be convinced my perceptions are wrong or to be told not to feel how I feel. I get to have my feelings. That said, you get to have YOURS, too, and you are welcome to share them. I also get to perceive events the way I perceive them; yours may differ. I won’t judge you.
Yesterday I went on just a bit about how certain types of “educational” efforts directed at the older generation may not work as well as they could (unless the aim really IS to shame people and make yourself look “woke” or whatever the current term for that is).
Today, I want to remind myself, and you, steadfast readers, that there are oh-so-many ways that people under 40 have been teaching me new things, and I’m loving it.
I’m serious. I’m looking at YOU. And I have on day-glo rainbow clothing. That means something.
One person, E., has been especially helpful, and I even took the time to write a nice thank-you note today. Reading her Facebook posts over the past months and years has given me great insight into the choices we make, living authentically, and learning all along. Her candid thoughts about her mental health and parenting struggles also warmed my heart and made me feel much less alone. She’s one of the many people I know who identify as bisexual or gender fluid, even if they look on the surface to be in a more traditional relationship. It gives me great hope for the future.
My son’s gf (that’s what she calls it) is another one I learn a lot from. She’s got lots and lots to say, and sometimes it’s rather raw, but she always makes it clear that she’s sharing her thoughts and not pushing them on anyone else. That lets me read and learn and not feel attacked, no matter how much she hates capitalists. I’ve learned so much about the life of people who don’t “fit in” to stereotypes, have barriers to overcome (like not driving in Austin, Texas, not being able to afford your very important medications, dealing with autism symptoms, etc.). Seeing how she’s creating a good life with my son, having fun on Instagram, and being the creative soul she is gives me even more hope for the future.
The Hermits' Rest 